TUESDAY’S early session bore little fruit for Team Ireland at the Paris Olympics, with two missing out in a final, one narrow missing of qualifying for a final and another close loss in a final qualifier.
Three Irish athletes were in competition in the early session; two in the individual showjumping final and one in the three-metre springboard diving semi-final.
Later in the day, Ireland’s first women’s track cycling pursuit team narrowly missed out on qualifying for the final.
Equestrian
Derry’s Daniel Coyle, riding Legacy, and Corkman Shane Sweetnam, on James Kann Cruz, both failed to make the medal jump-off at Château de Versailles in what was a monumentally difficult course.
Coyle’s medal hopes came unstuck when his mare Legacy lost a shoe and he lost a stirrup.
Sweetnam and James Kann Cruz; his 11-year-old grey gelding known as ‘Gizmo’, started and finished well but came unstuck early at the 5th and finished with 12 faults, in 22nd place.
Afterwards, he said: “He tried his best but I’d say the tank was a little bit empty after four big rounds in six days. He got a second wind and finished the course brilliantly, I’m very proud of him and our entire team.”
Diving
Jake Passmore narrowly missed out on a place in the three-metre springboard final, finishing 2.25 points out of the top 18 to qualify in 21st.
The youngest competitor in the field and experiencing his first year diving at the senior level, Passmore started with a forward 3-and-a-half somersault dive, which would turn out to be his highest-scoring dive with 68.20 points.
The 19-year-old was consistent in the first four dives, adding scores of 64.50, 63.00 and 66.30 for dives two, three and four respectively, putting himself in contention at 11th place overall.
However, mistakes in dives five and six cost Passmore with scores of 49.40 and 49.50 moving him down the rankings and just outside the qualification places.
Track Cycling
Mia Griffin, Lara Gillespie, Kelly Murphy, and Alice Sharpe will be disappointed with their narrow elimination in the qualifying round of the women’s team pursuit.
Having been second out of the blocks after Japan, the team did well in their run, finishing in a time of 4:12.447 but this was not enough to qualify for the final.
It was always to be an uphill battle but in the end, it was Canada who claimed the final spot, edging Ireland out by 0.242 seconds.
